Hundreds of non-teaching staff in Derry schools walk out over pay

Non-teaching staff who are members of Unison, GMB, NIPSA and Unite unions picketed outside their schools over the failure to deliver a pay and grading review, which was due in 2019.

Noreen Robinson is the area organiser with Unison and also worked as a classroom assistant for over 15 years. She said: “Hundreds of schools have closed down today and our members are telling you they've had enough. The pay they're on does not reflect the work they're doing and their good will is completely gone. They're going to continue to strike until they get what they deserve, which is fair pay to recognise the job they're doing

"Inflation's gone up and so have the demands of our job and people are not living anymore, we’re surviving and that's not the society we should be in in 2023.”

Danielle McLaughlin is a cleaner and classroom assistant in St Joseph’s College. She feels ‘frustrated’ that non-teaching staff have been ‘forgotten about’, especially when they are relied upon so heavily to care for the well-being of the pupils and the upkeep of the school. She said: “We’re depended on to make sure the school’s clean and up to standard. The classroom assistants are like the teachers’ left arm because they need us so they’re able to strive and do the best for the students.”

Ronan McIntyre, classroom assistant in St Joseph’s said: “I live own my own and the cost of living has gone up by 10% so, with Christmas coming up a lot of people will be struggling this year. I love working here and I look out for the kids but also look out for other members of staff and if we can’t look after ourselves, we can’t provide the best care and support for the young people here. It’s in everyone’s best interest for us to be paid fairly.

Sinead Thompson is an additional special educational needs assistant in Ardnashee School. She said: “Most of our job is done through goodwill and it feels very strange for us to take away that goodwill but the responsibility of the job has just increased so much. The complexity of the children has increased so much and our pay just doesn't reflect it at all.”

"We opened the whole time during Covid and the education sector seemed to be the only sector that didn't get any recognition payments at all. We have a lot of students with medical conditions, which means our non-teaching staff have to be more specialised and trained to deal with these needs. Obviously other schools also deal with additional needs and they should also be paid fairly for this.

"I've been here eight years and my pay just hasn't changed at all. I was in England working for 15 years before that and I'm on a third of the wage I was on in England 10 years ago so I just don't see why we shouldn't be getting the same money as everyone else.”

Ciara Deane, principal of St Joseph’s, says she ‘fully supports’ her staff, who are the ‘life of the school’. she said: “The non-teaching staff do so much of the hidden work in school and have sustained, develop relationships with children from 8am until they leave after school. They do all the unseen, real work that manages big buildings like ours. I’ve been lobbying for a long time with MLAs to talk about classroom assistants’, administrators’ and caretakers’ pay because you could not run the school without them.

“We're very, very proud to be an operational, all-boys school in an area of high deprivation, child poverty and food poverty and our staff are not exempt from that. I would imagine that, for some of our staff, once their households are covered they would be on the poverty line themselves, the salaries are so low.”

"I would like to give a big shout out to the staff at St Joseph's Boys for the excellent work they do and the sustained relationships for the boys. A lot of our staff are local and they stay with the school, some are working here 25-30 years because of the relationships they have with the boys. We couldn't do it without them.”

The unions have further strike action planned in the coming weeks.